Introduction to Celestia Add-Ons 26 Apr 2003
Selden Ball has created a very helpful introduction to creating add-ons for Celestia 1.3.0. If some of your favorite astronomical objects are missing from Celestia, or if you want to create an entirely ficitious planetary system, then you'll be interested in reading this add-on introduction. There have been a few changes to the way add-ons work between versions 1.2.5 and 1.3.0, so the guide is useful even for veteran Celestia users.

Celestia 1.3.0 16 Apr 2003
Release 1.3.0 of Celestia is now available. The most significant change since version 1.2.5 is the addition of multiview. With this feature, the view may be split into several panels, allowing you to observe an event from different angles simultaneously. See the change log for the complete list of new features and bug fixes in Celestia 1.3.0. The release of version 1.3.0 is also the official debut of the Celestia Users' Guide by Frank Gregorio. It's available in HTML and Microsoft Word formats.

Celestia 1.2.5 for Mac OS X 26 Jan 2003
Celestia 1.2.5 is now available for Mac OS X. In addition to supporting all of the new 1.2.5 features, the new build has a Cocoa interface. However, Celestia for Mac OS X should still be considered alpha software. Download it here and discuss your experiences in this forum thread.

Celestia 1.2.5 8 Jan 2003
Release 1.2.5 of Celestia is finally ready. The new release includes a lot of bug fixes and some major new features. Linux users should be pleased with the new KDE interface (though the Gnome interface is still there, and even has bug fixes.) In 1.2.5 comet tails are rendered, so you can see striking views of Hale-Bopp in 1997 and other famous comet encounters. The accuracy of Celestia has improved dramatically. It's possible now to watch the moons of Jupiter eclipse each other, follow the Voyager spacecraft on their grand tours of the solar system, and see the eclipse of Xerxes in 479 B.C.E. The complete list of changes is in the change log.

Celestia in the Classroom 9 Oct 2002
Teacher Frank Gregorio has contributed a Celestia lesson plan targeted at high school and middle school students. If you're interested in using Celestia as part of a science class, or if you'd just like a gentle introduction to using Celestia, see the README and then download the lesson plan. The documents are in MS Word format.

Quaoar 7 Oct 2002
Quaoar is the name of a large Kuiper Belt Object recently discovered by Chad Trujillo and Mike Brown of Caltech. The estimated diameter of Quaoar is 1250km, making it largest solar system object discovered since Pluto. More information can be found on the discoverers' web page. To view Quaoar in Celestia, download the Kuiper Belt .ssc file and place it in Celestia's extras directory.

Celestia Users' Gallery 15 Sep 2002
Visit the new Celestia Users' Gallery to see screenshots taken by Celestia users. See views of our Solar System, spacecraft, and hypothetical worlds around other stars. Some of the images are from the default Celestia installation, and the others require add-ons that you can download for free.

Close Approach: Asteroid 2002 MN 22 Jun 2002
Asteroid 2002 MN was detected on June 17, after it came within 120,000 kilometers of the Earth (less than one third of the distance to the Moon) on June 14. The object is estimated to be about 100 meters in diameter. To get a better idea of just how close 120,000 kilometers is, download the new neo.ssc file and install it in Celestia's extras directory. Start Celestia, go to 2002 MN, set the time back to June 14, 2002, and check out the great view of Earth . . .

New Exoplanets 21 Jun 2002
The discovery of 17 new extrasolar planets was announced earlier this week. One of the finds is the first planet outside of our solar system with an orbital radius approximately equal to Jupiters. Another of the new planets is the smallest yet discovered, with a mass as small as 30 Earths (or, twice the mass of Neptune.) Further details may be found here. If you'd like to explore the new systems with Celestia, you should replace your current extrasolar.ssc file with this updated version.

Update: 8 more extrasolar planets were announced by the Geneva team on June 18; these have now been added to extrasolar.ssc as well.

Celestia 1.2.4 2 May 2002
Release 1.2.4 of Celestia is finally ready. Many, many features have been added since the 1.2.1, the last announced released. Eclipse shadow rendering together with accurate orbital calculations for most major moons in our solar system, mean that you can view eclipses on Earth, Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus. Phase lock and chase camera modes have been added so that you can set up great flyby views from comets, asteroids, and spacecraft. The scripting system has been expanded with new commands. And, perhaps most importantly, lots of annoying bugs have been eliminated. The change log has all the details.

Celestia Add-on Respository 24 Mar 2002
Iván Rivera (Bruckner) has created an add-on repository for Celestia. If you've made custom planets or entire solar systems, submit them to his site so that other Celestia users can enjoy them.

Celestia 1.2.2 Preview: Eclipses 18 Feb 2002
One of the new features coming in Celestia 1.2.2 is eclipse shadow rendering. You'll be able to view shadows cast from eclipses between any planets and moons. The screen shots below show the 21 Jun 2001 total solar eclipse and the 11 Nov 1997 triple shadow transit on Jupiter. The shadows on Jupiter are from Callisto, Ganymede, and Io.

Classic Spacecraft for Celestia 11 Feb 2002
For a touch of nostalgia, go to the add-ons page and download the classic spacecraft package, with models of the Mercury and Gemini capsules created by Shrox. The models will stress your graphics card a bit, but all the detail makes them look great.

Celestia 1.2.1 Released for Windows 16 Jan 2002
1.2.1 is a minor upgrade that fixes a couple serious bugs in the Windows version. The view options dialog and the locations menu were causing Celestia to crash in some cases. If you've already installed Celestia 1.2.0 and don't want to download the whole 11 meg 1.2.1 package, you can just grab this 340K zipped EXE and use it to replace your old celestia.exe.

New Forums 28 Jan 2002
I've created a new Celestia forum. The old BlazeBoard based forum had way too many bugs with formatting and storing user information. I've switched to phpBB which is prettier, less buggy, and still in active development. Unfortunately, I don't know how to import the old articles and user database into phpBB, so I've left the old forum accessible.

Add-ons for Celestia 1.2.0 21 Jan 2002
The Shroxmars package has been updated for version 1.2.0 of Celestia. This package contains models of the Mars Global Surveyor and Mars Odyssey spacecraft currently in orbit around Mars. Also available is a new file with orbital data for nearly forty small moons of the giant planets. Install this and you'll be able to visit the 'shepherd' satellites in the Saturn's rings system, and follow Telesto and Calypso as they orbit in the leading and trailing Lagrange points of Tethys. Both the Shroxmars and minor moons packages are on the add-ons page.

Celestia 1.2.0 for Mac OS X 21 Jan 2002
Bob Ippolito has ported Celestia 1.2.0 to Mac OS X. You can get either the binary or source version from here. This port of Celestia is runnable from the Finder and includes a basic menu bar.

Celestia 1.2.0 Released 16 Jan 2002
Version 1.2.0 of Celestia is finally ready. 1.2.0 has more new features and bug fixes than any previous update of Celestia. The UI has seen significant enhancements; the Gtk interface of the Unix version is finally starting to catch up with the Windows UI. The new solar system file format makes it much easier to add new objects to Celestia, so expect lots of extra packages containing new planets and spacecraft very soon. The Windows version of Celestia now includes a movie recording feature that will let you make your own space movies with any installed video codec. Also, there is improved 3DS mesh importing, a fixed Locations menu, better orbital calculations . . . see the change log for all the details, then visit the download section to get the new release.

Early MacOS X Version of Celestia 1.1.4 10 Jan 2002
Visit the Downloads section to grab the release of Celestia for MacOS X. This is alpha software and you should only use it if you're familiar with the UNIX command line. A Finder-runnable version of Celestia with a real GUI will be available eventually. The MacOS X port of Celestia is the work of Craig Fields.

Planet Detected Orbiting Giant Star 10 Jan 2002
During Doppler reconnaissance of reference stars for NASA's Space Interferometry Mission, a planet was detected in orbit around the giant star Iota Draconis. This is the first detection of a planetary companion for a giant star. The planet has at least 8.6 times the mass of Jupiter and may in fact be a brown dwarf. It will be included in the exoplanets catalog in Celestia 1.2.0.

Brown Dwarf Found In Unexpected Orbit 7 Jan 2002
A brown dwarf has been discovered orbiting the star 15 Sge (HR 7672) at a distance of 14 AU. If the brown dwarf was in our solar system, this orbit would place it about halfway between the orbits of Saturn and Uranus. Current theories of planet formation predict that it should be impossible for such a large object (it has 50 to 80 times the mass of Jupiter) to form at this distance from a star. Unlike previous discoveries in which the presence of a stellar companion was inferred from wobbles in the star's motion, University of Hawaii astronomer Michael Liu used the adpative optics capabilities of the Keck telescope to actually image the brown dwarf moving around 15 Sge.

Mars Spacecraft by Shrox 16 Dec 2001
Shrox has created models of the Mars Odyssey and Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft. This ZIP archive contains the models and an updated solar system file which places them in orbits around Mars. The orbits are only approximate, and the Odyssey orbit is not the current one, but the orbit which it will be in after aerobraking is complete. To install, just download the file and unzip it into your Celestia directory.